“That’s okay, it’s been my pleasure having your stay. Now I can say I hosted and artist.”

I don’t think this person knew how much these words meant to me. I know I’ve written a little about imposter syndrome before but when I accept gifts or help from others it is always the first voice in my head with the microphone. One I am slowly learning how to turn the volume down on.

Over 6 months ago a wonderful human messaged me about participating in my tarot deck, I responded as I have done with quite a large number now of other cards. “Here’s how the queer tarot deck Im making works and thank you for messaging me – where do you live?”

I’ve never considered myself a professional photographer, I’ve been in front of a camera far more it feels like, than I’ve been behind it. Some of my favourite photos have been pure flukes or magical creations by my camera which I have unconsciously facilitated. Feeling my confidence in myself slowly growing is exciting and a constant reminder of the shadow self that comes up with it.

We email back and forth sporadically many more times over the following few months and I like how this person communicates and writes, telling me a story that maybe one day I can share. We move off email to chat and still barely know who I’m talking to but I’m excited about the thought of meeting them.

A queer tarot photography tour. Well that’s what a real artist would have called it. Visiting different towns and cities and taking pictures of magical queers, capturing their magick amd stories to tell through tarot into the future. That’s what an artist does.

I was “traveling to visit my family, and maybe a small wee day trip out to visit this person”. A day trip turned into a week visit somehow with very little sleep with each overland train ride. I arrived and promptly got food poisoning. “This is not how a professional does it” running through my head as I made friends with the toilet bowl. I’ve never felt more looked after and taken care of by people I barely knew, ever before in my life. Yet it felt like there was part of us that knew each other and had done for lifetimes before.

I feel like I’ve fallen in love with a few of the subjects in my tarot deck. I fell in love with the two most unlikely cards that met each other at one of my tarot card gallery exhibitions and have been seeing each other for a while now. I fell in love with the deep eyes of a wolf that I’ll never understand and tried so hard to capture in a still photo. I fell in love years ago with the wandering bush pirate who saw my vulnerability and openness when I newly out in the queer community and saw it as precious magic not naivety. I fell in love with the devilish seductivity of latex and humans who pursue what excites them and stand actively in their community. I fell in love by a muddy icy river watching excitement and laughter wash over this humans face as they did a photoshoot that might have otherwise been completely out of their comfort zone.

I’ve fallen in love with the bravery of the stories I’ve heard. I’ve fallen in love with the beauty that exists so fiercely outside of society’s standards. I’ve fallen in love with the activism and power with which that queers are making sure their voices are heard.

Falling in love with the art I’ve made is the biggest political statement I have made so far. I accepted the magical task of creating a tarot deck with my artistic skills to facilitate voices being heard, in April 2017. It is teaching me the confidence to say “I am a real artist and these voices must be heard!”

I’ve known a while that this project is so much bigger than me. It is the love, art and voices of all of us making magick together. Even if all you did was “hosted an artist”. You changed my life and made this queer tarot deck possible.

I find myself in my head a lot. Over thinking, planning and analysing. More often than not I operate from a head space, or so is my perception of myself. My body has a super loud voice, viscerally telling me if something is right or not, but it’s taken me 33 years to learn really how to truly listen to it when it shouts at me. Even if it is as simple as communicating to those around me that I’m doing something outside of my comfort zone and am feeling super anxious about it.

I got back from Evans Lake on Saturday. A beautiful camp on one of those stereotypically breathtakingly beautiful and picturesque lakes with pine trees right to the shoreline and towering blue mountains in the background that Canada is so famous for. The air filled with bird and tree noises during the day, woodpeckers tapping out bugs from trees, the ravens caw echoing across the lake as it imitates some bizzare cackle, and the trees talking to each other around the valley. The water lapps listfully at the dock I’m sitting on in the sun, watching it sparkle and dance over the slight ripples the wind is making in the water. I’m feeling very vulnerable and open – witch camp has this magical way of creating a safe space for me to explore all my deepest vulnerabilities and edges, roughly destroy any lingering crutches or unhelpful security blankets, then provide the support and love needed to put my heart back together and repattern, and re-wild my being into a stronger, more self loving, more self confident version of me.

My comfort zone is interpersonal skills, performance, facilitation, or things that ask me to step outside myself and observe, analyse or look at myself in relation to others. Looking at myself in relation to nature, the earth and my existence and communication with it, is all very new ground.

Innately I am drawn to it. My mind calms when I am in the forest, swimming or splashing in a waterfall, but when I am not moving, when my body is not galavanting my brain across a mountain path, I find the brain voice takes over. I start looking at things technically, as photographer, or even drifting mentally far away checking in with all the minute and mundane carry on in my life that may even be the slightest bit worrisome.

Feral.

Wild.

Animism.

Belonging.

Being the city version of wild has been a massive part of my story, drug and alcohol fueled mischief and mayhem. Getting lost in music, darkness and nightclub lights to shut up the constant static dribble in my brain. Here my body is vibrating to the boom of bass, writhing in a sea of hollow beings, zombied and numbed out of this reality into a darker world. All the connections or what I thought were friendships from this era of my life have evaporated, realising these friendships were parasitic for what they could use me for. My little socially awkward, shy inner child learning to ‘perform’ friendship, devastated and longing for connections that meant something more lasting.

Survival is animalistic, and sometimes comes at a cost of shutting down bodily and emotive responses to accomplish a task. I’ve run away from life and survival several times, turning to sex work to survive, selling my body to feed, clothe myself and at one point in secret also support a partner. All my life I have admired the strong ones, who stood up for sex workers, were proud of their profession and choice of work. My experience felt shameful, full of guilt from my conservative christian upbringing. I couldn’t talk about it, I can’t even physically remember large chunks of time I spent servicing the patriarchy.

Since I started talking about it again I have been slowly healing, taking down my walls against all those I saw that resembled the men who used to use me in exchange for my survival.

Belonging. What is belonging? Is it feelings of validation that are not connected with sexual gratification? Is it feelings of being worthy or valued that doesn’t come with expectations of submission or meeting sexual needs? Part of my healing process has been crucially connected to the difference between intimacy and sex. Feeling connected, belonging and letting go the desire to please, present a version of my self curated for the audience at hand in order to please, or be liked. I always felt like didn’t belong in my conservative christian family who still to this day pray daily for me to repent of my homosexual lifestyle, and who would probably turn a horrified shade of pale if they read this story.

I am a feral Sagittarian body, held in check by a cautious, risk averse, slow processing Capricorn brain, with my delicate Piscean moon flowing with emotions, feels and love looking for a safe place to share and be seen and heard.

I allowed my body and emotions to drive me all last week at camp. I let it break me, re-wild me, re-wire, re-pattern me. We had a cave, we wrote, scrawled cried our stories out on the cave walls. We talked to the earth, listened to the guidance of the stones, connected our hearts, skin, bones and beings with the living things all around us. Green bloods, the bones and life force of animals worked into our magick with permission, consent. Remembering that we were all once in constant communication, that the seasons worked around and within us all. Throwing off the constraints of the over culture of today, the expectations, the internalised shame and believing in each other, being and believing in ourselves.

I stood in that circle of humans, markings of my feral wildness smudged all over my face. I had made my mark on the cave wall. An outline of my hand, the word “body” and a love heart.

My commitment to myself, to stay true to myself, be aware of painful of situations where my bodily responses completely shut down in order to survive. A pact of self love and kindness that I am worthy of love, I am loveable, and that I can find intimacy that isn’t sexually dependant, and sex that is conscious, gloriously consensual and doesn’t ever define my worth as a human to myself or to others. My body went into shock. I stopped being conscious of the story my lips were sharing with the group. I let go, broke, and my mind fully released control – to my body. Tears flooded down my face, and my lungs heaved with relief of releasing and acknowledging my trauma and pain. Not comparing it to the gravity of the experience that others shared, but appreciating the healing, and space held around me. Conscious of the arms that slinked in around me, not conscious of who they were, as I collapsed into the soft caring shoulder offered to me. You all held me in my moment of grief, vulnerability and fragile healing. You all have a special place in my heart.

I have a public Voice: Deciding to create is scary, deciding to create in a field where there are already thousands of products is scarier. That point of pressing the go button that I realised this project will have so many eyes on it, and that my art is out there for public opinion is daunting. To be rejected and criticised is the tax I will pay on having a public voice. Even really the loudest critic I have to work with is the one that lives inside my own head. Radio K-Fuck has been saying all these things to me in the last few weeks:

– You’re not a photographer

– Your photos aren’t very ood

– You’ve never made a documentary before

– You have no idea how to run a crowdfunding campaign

– You’re not an expert Tarot reader

– What makes you an authority to decide this should be created

– People will think you are narccasistic

– You don’t have any qualifications in this field

– Will anyone really care once it’s been created

– That’s alot of effort to put into creating if no one knows it exists

– What if you get called a fraud?

– People will think you’ve only done it for money

Thank you for coming on this journey with me. Here is my pep-talk to myself.

I am in deep love with my creative project, but am realising that it must not be my child. I can nurture, create and foster it all through the creation process, but once it is done, I must let it go. I am not doing this to get hundreds of followers. I create my art from a place of creative necessity, that speaks from the darkest places in my heart. I create out of pure love of the creation process. Telling my story is the only story that I can tell. The only story I am qualified to tell. Not to tell my story, and how I am finding, learning and growing myself through my Queer Tarot Project would feel like I was living a fake life.

What motivates me with this project is the need to be seen, to be known… Hell I don’t even need to be liked. I just want people to say “I see you.” To me, my definition of being an artist is: walking through the world saying “don’t erase me.” I feel like this is my journey to finding my voice, unblocking the fear of being shot down for speaking up or having an opinion In the case of my Queer Tarot project I think that collective “me” resonates. It is saying that “We matter. Our stories matter, and we have a place in tarot and other forms of spiritual or esoteric practices”.

I need to know that I’m here, and alive. I need to know that you feel that Im here. I’m still learning what it feels like to be okay to take up this space in the world. To create, to make things, to make art, and say to the World, “Here I am”. It is through this project, every time I create a new Tarot card with someone, that I am finding the lost pieces of myself, healing the brokenness of my confidence, finding again the magick and light in my soul. Physically, mentally and emotionally living the lessons of each card as it comes alive.

My older, wiser (some how that seems perfectly logical) future self would say to me, “Stop being so hard on yourself, you’re doing just fine, just keep at it. You are more courageous than you think.” Thanking the inner critic radio for keeping me alive today and deciding to take those risks, and jump into the fire feet first. I realised just now that I live terrifyingly. I consistently and on-purpose, put myself in situations where I absolutely have no idea what I’m doing, then FURIOUSLY go about learning every single thing I can to become proficient at the thing I’m trying to do.

– Moving countries

– Applying for jobs

– Starting my own business

– Making Tarot Cards

– Making a documentary

– Making image-recognition fancy thing for my tarot cards

– Dating… haha

This I guess is the arrogance of belonging. I belong here because I have showed up to learn, create and do the work. I may not be the best or even the worst but I have showed up to my life and I am here and creating shit. “You’re out of your mind.” “Good, all the best things happen outside of mind.” I have to remind myself that this applies to all of this list I just wrote.

Over and over again, but although right now at this very moment of writing I feel incredibly uncomfortable with this change and the flux I’m going through, it is also an environment that I flourish in: It’s challenging, with lots of opportunity to lear and try new things. Thanks Amy for helping make this okay for myself again. I am still getting used to the idea that I find my power when I feel the most powerless. When I feel the most restless I will find ways of channeling that energy into creativity.

Life doesn’t happen to me, it happens FOR me, And I keep doing these things for myself not too myself. It’s not enough to love my art, I must believe my art, my Queer Tarot project, all you wonderful humans who have touched my life with your stories – that you love me back.

What makes it all just a little bit easier is the knowledge that there is nothing I can put out there that is truely my own. Every idea has already been done before, even this idea of a Queer Tarot deck. I started and immediately found 5 or 6 people already creating their own interpretation of what this idea brought to them. All I can do is follow the fire in me and share it with my voice and my experience. That is all that is unique about this – Me.

I wanted to go, but $80 was too much. She was coming I thought it would be wonderful to see her again… I said

“I’ll be yours for the night if you have a plus one.” It was too late, I’d said it and she’d said yes. I was going and I was quite excited.

A bold move on my part, such bolshy confidence I hadn’t felt in such a long time, metered with the overthinking after thought of “was that rude, what if she says yes, what does that involve, what have I signed up for?!” It was too late, I’d said it and she’d said yes. I was going and I was quite excited. I knew one of my best friends would be there if I needed so I knew I’d be safe, but the adventure of the unknown was intoxicating. I’d not been out on a wild unknown limb in a while, and certainly hadn’t let anyone any near my body. The day grew closer and she sent me a picture of a pony bridle and bit, and asked if I was into pony play. My mind raced, I didn’t know what that would entail for her.. I’d participated in a few other play scenarios before mind you, with less industrial equipment shall we say. Unicorns are ponies I thought, I love those rainbow tails you can get, I jumped online and put one on a wishlist, thinking the always come with such wee plugs, maybe that’s so it’s more comfortable to wear over a longer period of time.

Anyway back to the story. The day arrived and I’d cried three times before it was near time to get there. I’d woken up feeling low, tired and lonely… tears flowed in the shower as I pulled myself together to face the day, dance practice was next. I was looking forward to this, a blat of exercise to shake up the adrenaline and shift the mood so I’d be bouncy and ready to dance later. Queue a wonderful lesson, on preparing for dance competitions by being kind to your inner child – and tears. I love this work and have much to say to my inner child and much to re-write. Shaking that off I was on to the next thing. I don’t do busy days by halves I thought, and at least it was a comedy show, laughs and light heartedness that I love to shift the mood so I’d be bounce and ready to dance later. The universe really had other plans for my day. Hannah Gadsby was doing her retirement show “Nannette”. She’s an amazing woman, and boy did she share her story and the ringer she’s been put through. Powerfully she announced she’s retiring. Boldly exposing how so much comedy is based around self deprecating, self humiliating and reinforces one’s own attachment to emotional repression, an inability to communicate or ask for help when hurt, frustrated or angry.

That much “humour” is mocking someone, something or calling oneself terrible things in order to garner a laugh from an audience. She was standing up for herself, her self worth and refusing make herself the brunt of the joke anymore.

Humour is amazing but boy does it conceal or shut down emotional openness and deflect from a world of hurt or acute fear of vulnerability. Queue more tears, me and the rest of the entire theatre.

This isn’t the sexy story you thought you’d be reading but it has a happy ending I promise.I was shaken, the universe had wanted to get a point across to me, and I was listening. I was fragile but being kind to myself again. Sitting in my vulnerability, I thought “I guess I’m ready for a dance now”. This was not the mood shift or energy I had been expecting. The club was dark, mirror ball covered dangly light installations decorated the ceiling and rainbow flashes danced about the walls and across the faces of all the shadowy people in the venue. I was late, they’d all been there for a few hours, but I crept in ready to be swallowed by a crowd of faceless bodies, rolling to the waves of the bass as it thumped from the speakers. I wiggled my way to the midst of the madness, my skin taking in the temperature difference from outside to the damp warmth inside. And there she was.

Legs crossed in lotus position, arms out beside her, oosing the power of the goddess to the very tips of her long tallon’d fingers. She was floating a good metre off the floor, a spider web of ropes woven all around her in a beautifully symmetrical arch that made her look like she was floating on a throne.

She didn’t move, her limbs hugged tight by beautiful purple bonds, “it is her favourite colour”, I thought. Her head masked in glossy black latex, like a bald cap that came all the way over to mysteriously hide her eyes, ending elegantly just above her nose, highlighting her cheekbones. The mask sported a glossy black latex halo, a solid dark shiny disk that framed her head, with silken tassels hanging down past each ear. This was a powerful goddess of the night. I was barely clothed, covered mostly in golden bronze metallic paint. Feeling freer without clothes trying to force me into a certain shape or cover up the beautiful ink that I’ve etched into my skin over the years. My hair was high, and filled with colourful flowers, my neck draped with a heavy necklace of tiny cocaine spoons. My body strapped into a beautiful pink harness that glowed like magick under the lights. My boobs sported matching weighted twirling tassels that I knew I’d show off later. The music was hypnotic, wooing me into it’s dark rhythms, most of the humans that surrounded me, naked or equally dressed in little clothing. I’d brought my flogger with me, feeling proud it was a well made piece and beautifully colour coordinated with the other harness pieces I was wearing. My mind had started to wander, so I asked a person dancing close to me if they’d want a gentle flogging or if they wanted to flog me. My offer was quickly accepted and we moved to part of the club there was room to swing.

My body warm, my skin warming up too as the sensation of tickling, teasing, and soft leather smacking into me repeatedly building up to an intoxicating sting.

My shoulders leaning into the pleasure of this pain, the thud then the tickle of the ends of the straps as it brushed up my bare back. The sting and tingle as it flicked around to the soft sensitive skin of my inner thighs. My butt cheeks framed by a little delicate black hassling and hanging sequins were bare and flushed pink with the blood flow of excited skin. My body didn’t wince, or jump, it leaned into the intoxicating sensations all over my skin. My mind ceased to be in my body, it felt like it was simply consumed by sensation. A gentle hand runs over the raised skin checking in to see that I am okay, and if I wish to continue. Hips press onto my ass, my body leans closer into the brick wall in front of me as I feel skin against skin, and breath whispering into my ear. I haven’t had another person’s skin against mine in what feels like an eternity. I return to my body, suddenly feeling very raw and vulnerable. The music floods back into my brain as I come back down to the environment around me, and we slink back to the dance floor to be enveloped again into the safety of the crowds, suddenly aware of the audience behind us hiding in the shadows enjoying the play we were having, sensing the energy of wild abandon and tactile pleasure.

She was there in the crowd, released from her suspended throne of purple ropes. She kissed me on the cheek and I blush. I feel like a kid around someone they admire and look up to. Suddenly all my experiences of kink and all things of the underworld melt away and I feel like an innocent creature next to her.

She is covered in beautiful tattoos, the long silken tassels from her latex halo frame her as she looks around then back to smile at me. I tingle with excitement and uncertainty. These things are never rushed, or non consensual but still I was still feeling very vulnerable. Where was the sassy creature that wanted to be hers? I didn’t know but I was enjoying myself regardless. My energy open with a “wise” innocence calmly just letting what ever was going to happen unfold around me. I sighed, this was beautiful, I was safe, cared for and surrounded by wonderful humans who knew what they were doing and had warm sexual energy and love. Flash forward through my body moving and getting lost in the hypnotic rhythm and thump of the music, I was warm sweaty and happy, some how letting go over the tension that had built up and the emotional overwhelm of the day. This was the energy and and mood I’d hoped for… the universe had rewarded me for my patience through the lessons I’d needed to learn that day. There was a small room off the side of the dance floor, it’s roof a web of shibari rope she and I had woven for hours the day before. Suspended in the middle was a giant tire, as if it were her prey and she were the Queen of her web and it was caught in her clutches. The master behind the rope works of art lurked in the shadows, as we pressed our bodies together. A few moments later we are lashed together, a happy sweaty pile, teasing, scratching and writhing around. It’s curious, I thought, this is not quite what I expected tonight. Later I sit on a little crate as she is pleasured by the master, and the other person I’d played with earlier with the flogger. The exhibitionist in me is excited, I am not yet ready to participate, but I love being a voyeur. My body is excited by the unfamiliarity of it, yet not surprised that this beautiful collision of sexual energy has culminated in a beautiful puddle of wonderful people. We all writhe around in pleasure, me on my wee crate and them on and around the suspended tire ropes, with plenty to grip as our legs turn to jelly. Someone, maybe the rope master, I don’t remember – grips, pinches and roughly twists and squeezes my nipples as the tassels had come unstuck from my sweaty skin.

Fingernails scratch my skin. The tattoos on my back are dancing with sensations raised above my skin like icing on a cake.

I remember how much I love roughness, that fine line between pleasure /pain and being thrown around, and my body sighs in pleasure. Willing to take risks, willing to adventure to push my boundaries and grow. Learning my limits by testing them. Taking my philosophy on emotional intimacy and connection and put it to the practical test. Living life to the fullest, putting intellectual beliefs to the front of my lived experience and holding space for myself and where my mental headspace was at. My body, glowing, glistening with dampness, the taste of my pleasure on my lips. My limbs shaking, overwhelmed and on sensation overload – torn between wanting more and not being comfortable all at the same time, outside of the four walls of my temple boudoir.

I was in my power, open and vulnerable, willing to share intimacy and connection.

Rewriting rejection with scratch marks, practicing self love with welts across my skin and positively reframing ‘neediness’ with raised red lines over my body. That desire for affection, craving intimacy and wanting the comfort of physical touch are not weaknesses, and nor should I be ashamed of my desires and emotive affections.

I am not broken, I am just rediscovering my sparkle – she is wonderful, but tonight I reclaimed that devilish part of me and fell in love with myself again.

Queering the Emperor Tarot Card:

The Emperor card can be super challenging as a queer person as it traditional represents masculinity, power, the law, and basically an unemotional version of the patriarchy. Here I have tried to unpack the Emperor with the help of my beautiful witchy friend Myra, to give you a relevant and applicable interpretation in life as a queer, LGBTQIA or trans person. I wish to encourage and support this magick in my queer community, and my love of Tarot will not let heteronormativity, or patriarchal overtones ruin my love for Tarot.

I’m currently working on a Queer Tarot Project: Telling Queer Stories through the Archetypes of Tarot. Each of the Beautiful Major Arcana cards I’ve created tell the story of the queer person photographed for it. You can check out more of it here: www.queertarot.cards

My body feels scared to be this open, like you could see right into the darkest corners, the deepest feelings of insecurity and laugh back at them. But you don’t instead you whisper unintelligible sweetness in my ear. I catch the words “that was fun” said with that mischievous twinkle in your eye, that tells me you had your own journey of pleasure, animalistic desire and vulnerability that connected with mine.

My eyes catch yours back seeing for more. Where did you go, what did you see?

Did the wolf find the dappled sunlight in the river and chase it’s flow, feeling the cold stony river bed beneath it’s paws?

Did the owl find new heights, light in darker spaces a connection, a forrest of sweet fruits?

Did the pirate adventuring on the open seas of pleasure, sailing into uncharted waters of physical experience a new magick?

Did the witch find calm in the faerie world as we escaped, seeing peace, finding guidance from the animals that tumbled across the mossy banks as she walked along the river?

In my consciousness I return my inner child, curly hair bobbing about my face, no concepts of what was expected of me, the social expectations I was supposed to conform to. It feels simple, loving, protected and safe in this world inside my head.

I inhale and breath in your scent, knowing this connection is our beautiful queer magick.

My heart warms sharing this gift with you, knowing there is no expectations from here.

Friendships cemented in trust, a sacred adventure, a memory created for the vaults of trust.

My face sinks into your neck, and we lay back into the ground beneath us, a gentle giggle and sigh of contentment escaping our mouths.

A shooting star flies through the stars above us, the universe glittering it’s starry diamonds back at us.